While literary art on the plan of salvation has impacted our culture (Added Upon, Saturday’s Warrior) and provided a way to “be Mormon” in public (The Plan, Madman Atomic Comics), it has also and always been a place for our intelligent nutjobs to safely engage in speculative theology. The first example I always think of is “Eternal Misfit” by Roger Terry. You should read it yourself, but the story is completely unjustified by the canon—but neither does the canon disprove it. But it doesn’t matter if the story is correct or not. That’s the beauty of fiction and poetry: they don’t need to be true—they just need to tell truths. And “Eternal Misfit” does. That’s why I am still thinking about it today, twelve years after its publication.
Of the works we published last issue, the one my mind most often returns to is Daniel Cooper’s Talking to Dante in the Spirit World, specifically its update on the state of that lost third from before the world was. Those stanzas won’t leave me alone. And I think for the same reasons “Eternal Misfit” won’t leave me alone. Whether or not they are accurate assessments of individual fates isn’t the point. They capture something deeply true of our theology writ large: its wild open grandness—eternities forward and backward—salvation offered here and there and now and then—a God (who is male who is female who is parent who is child) so defined by love and openness and a propensity to welcome home that the universe bends towards forgiveness and grace.
And that’s what this issue offers. The variety of pieces is stunning. We start before the preexistence (I have new thoughts on intelligences, and so will you); we connect these mortal years to both our distant past and our coming future; we touch the Millennium; tech will push us toward godliness; birth and death will be marked with bold lines; you will be connected to your dead and they will cry out against you.
Some of these works take place in unimagined realms.
Some take place next door.
And that final collision might be the most Latter-day Saint aspect of this The Plan—the infinite is finite, the now is eternal, the holy is mundane, and the temporal is spiritual.
We are children of God. Just let that madness sink in for a bit, then click the forwardmost arrow for more.
See you in heaven.
Because it couldn’t be heaven without all you intelligent nutjobs plotting for us new worlds, new possibilities.
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The images collaged into this issue’s banner are courtesy of NASA and the Smithsonian. Thank you federal government for always being public domain!